Imagine that. Yesterday afternoon the Mint removed all order restrictions on the 2011 5-ounce Chickasaw National Recreation Area silver bullion coin just a week after it went on sale.

Sales began to its Authorized Purchaser network on July 18.

Now you can buy as many as you want.

Well, apparently you don’t want many.

Initial sales as reported in last week’s “Mint Statistics” column was just 8,400 coins out of a potential supply of 126,700 pieces.

That’s quite a reduction from the level of demand exhibited for the first one, the 5-ounce Gettysburg, which went on sale in late April and sold out its entire 126,700-coin supply in roughly three weeks.

Other than collectors, I would like to know who else is buying the large 5-ounce coins. I have not seen the emergence of a typical 5-ounce coin investor buyer yet.

Non-collector souvenir hunters have perhaps joined collectors. They have been smitten by the novelty of the new coins and perhaps the desire to be the first one on the block to own one that is slabbed MS-70.

Apparently, though, there aren’t too many of them chasing the Chickasaw design.

Novelty gone already?

This is the fifth design in a series that will offer 51 more. The final one will be offered in 2021.

About the Author David C. Harper has been a coin collector since 1963. He joined the Krause Publications editorial staff in 1978 and is currently editor of Numismatic News and World Coin News. He also edits two books annually, North American Coins & Prices and Coin Digest. He is the author of the Class of '63 column that runs each week in Numismatic News. His first bylined numismatic article appeared in the June 1971 issue of Coins Magazine and his various Krause Publications assignments included a stint as editor of the magazine 1980-1983. Harper received a bachelor of science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 1977. He had a double major of journalism and economics.